Flying “Cholo”: Incas, Airplanes, and the Construction of Andean Modernity in 1920s Cuzco, Peru

Abstract

The public euphoria for pilot Alejandro Velasco Astete’s flight from the capital city of Lima to his hometown of Cuzco, Peru, in 1925 was surpassed only by the anguish over his death in a crash a month later. Residents in the former Inca capital shared the almost universal fascination with flight that two years later transformed Charles Lindbergh into an international celebrity after his electrifying Atlantic crossing. Aviation promised integration for a Peruvian city that resided nearly two miles up in the thin Andean air and lay several days’ journey by train and steamship from Lima. Flight in the indigenous region carried symbolic capital for intellectuals and public officials who bristled at their perceived racial inferiority and resented political, economic, and cultural marginalization by Lima. So when a Quechua-speaking pilot of Inca nobility and Spanish ancestry stepped down from an Italian-made biplane onto Cuzco soil in 1925, elite observers hailed him as nothing less than an Andean superman. Newspapers breathlessly described the authentic sierran blood, vitality, masculinity, and skill of the first Peruvian to make the treacherous if not suicidal flight across the Andes. Elites were convinced this “modern” sierran man and his mastery of the science and technology of aviation were undeniable proof Cuzco belonged at the vanguard of the ethnically and geographically divided Peruvian nation.

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